The Greatest Achievement
by KittyThomas
Summary: Half a century after the end of the series, Ed and Winry enjoy a "peaceful" afternoon in Resembool with a few visitors. The usual pairings, happy fluff. Spoilers for the end of the series? Some. R&R please!


**A/N: So, I really should be working on my Al/May fic, but I just got the bug for this and had to churn it out. I'm lacking motivation for Al/May right now and I don't know why! They're just adorable. But Ed and Winry are my fave...**

**So, I tried to work it out, and the ages of various children/grandchildren should fit with canon events, although I'm not entirely positive! I've been deliberately vague on ages, my bad! Anyway, here we go...**

Disclaimer: Don't own FMA... if I did, we would have more Royai and kissing. :P

**The Greatest Achievement**

It was summertime, 1968, some fifty years after the events of the Promised Day, and Resembool was experiencing some of best weather of that year. Edward Elric sat out on the porch of his house, reading a newspaper, and soaking up the scent of the heady summer flowers and the mouth-watering aroma of his wife's apple pie cooling on the window ledge. Ed sighed happily; today was a good day to be alive.

Winry came out of the kitchen, her apron dusted with flour and her face smudged with oil. Her now-white hair was twisted back in a bun, but two long strands still fell over her shoulders. Her eyes, blue as ever, smiled across at Ed as she lowered herself into the deck chair beside him and whipped out a mechanic's magazine. For fifty years they'd been married now, and yet it could have been a scene from their early days, so little had changed.

"Pie ready yet?"

"Give it a minute! It needs time to cool. Jeez, you're so impatient."

"Maybe you're just not quick enough, woman!"

Winry slipped a wrench out of her apron pocket and shot a steely look at him. Ed immediately quietened and sank back into his newspaper. Arguing with your wife was fun- getting beaten to a bloody pulp was not.

Into this quiet afternoon came the sound of laughing and three children came running up the garden path, two boys and a girl, all around the same age. The two Rockbell-Elric dogs that had been snoozing on the ground looked up as they approached and rushed off to greet them.

"Hurry up, Milly!"

"It's not a race!"

"You're just saying that 'cause you don't want to lose!"

"No fair!"

"Haha... OOF!"

There was the sound of crashing as young Edward Elric 2nd smashed into the steps, face-first, hastily over-taken by his second cousin and his younger brother Alex, who giggled as he picked himself up and folded his arms crossly.

"I'll get you that!" he hissed at Milly.

"For what? I didn't do anything! I didn't put the stairs there."

"I'm still going to get you!"

Milly shrieked and leapt into Winry's lap. "Aunt Winry, help! Edward's trying to hurt me!"

"Now _that _doesn't sound familiar at all-"

As young Edward made a grab for her, Older Ed caught his namesake round the middle and held him firmly, keeping back a laugh, until he'd given up and sat down on his grandfather's lap in a huff. Alex, who'd remained quiet throughout this spectacle, took this moment to sigh.

"You're so uncool, brother."

"What do you mean, UNCOOL? Me! That's no way to speak to your brother, you little-"

Ed had to tighten his grip again to stop his grandson from attempting to fly at his little brother. He sighed, and looked over at Winry, who was picking bits of grass out of Milly's soft brown hair. There was a lot of Al about her face, despite only being his granddaughter, but her dark hair (probably inherited from her father, Al's son-in-law) made her look a lot like Trisha. It was strange sometimes, and extremely satisfying seeing his youngest little great-niece play with two boys that looked so much like himself and Alphonse in their youth.

Winry smiled and looked up at him.

"He reminds me so much of somehow else I know when he was young."

"I'm quite sure," Ed said through pursed lips, "That I have no idea what you mean. He certainly gets his violent streak from his grandmother."

Winry's eyes glinted and Ed swore he saw her wrench twitch of its own free will.

"Not in front of the children... dear."

Suddenly, little Edward stopped struggling. "Hey... is that.. is that apple pie?"

"Yes it is! You can have some if you promise to stop tormenting the others."

"How can he can have some and I-" Ed stopped as Winry tapped him on the back of the head with her rolled-up magazine.

"Because you _never _stop tormenting others!"

She disappeared into the kitchen with Milly tagging behind, clearly still watching out for Edward, only to stick her head out the window a few moments later. "Only joking dear, it's just cooled now."

"Then bring it out and let's eat!"

"Do I... do I smell Winry's apple pie?"

Ed turned round and saw Al walking up the path towards the rest of them, arm in arm with May. Behind them came Mina, their younger daughter and Milly's mother, with her husband, and their older daughter Lisa, who looked decidedly sulky and being dragged out on such a lovely day. Ed chuckled under his breath, Lisa was a teenaged alchemy-nerd, and wanted nothing more to be back at her house, curled up with books. Her older brother had already left home to go travelling, and it was obvious she wanted nothing more to follow him.

"As soon as you're sixteen dear," said Mina, confirming Ed's deductions.

"Grandpa Al and Uncle Ed were _much _younger than that when _they _left home!"

"Special case, dear. They didn't have much of a choice. I'm sure they would have much preferred to be at home with their family-"

"Your mother's right, Lisa."

"Shut up, Uncle Ed!" she huffed, throwing herself into a spare chair and doing her very best to look thoroughly unhappy. It didn't take long until it became too much of an effort however, and she spoke up quietly. "So... could we go over that new reconstruction theory you were telling me about?"

Ed laughed and started to tell her all about it, while Winry carved up the apple pie and began to dish it out. There was just enough to go around. After it was finished, the younger kids went out and played in the garden with the dogs, while the adults sat around the garden table and chatted away about old times. Lisa curled up in the shade with an Alchemy book Ed had tossed her way.

There wasn't much in the way of news, as they'd seen each other just a few days ago, but they chatted non-stop about their various offspring and their current exploits nonetheless. Only 2 of the Elric brothers' children (out of the five they shared between them) had remained in Resembool to raise their families, although they often joked that this was probably a good thing, as they could take over the town will all of them at the rate they were going at. Ed and Winry's eldest grandchild, Belle, had just had her first child, a daughter named Sara. Like her mother, she had married a military man, and remained in Central where he was stationed.

"I still can't believe we had to share two grandkids with that Mustang..." Ed had had many years to get used to the idea, but every now and again, it cropped up again, how that "cocky bastard Second Lieutenant Maes Mustang" (now a Brigadier General) had seduced his little girl. Ed still called her that, even though she was pushing fifty and a grandmother herself.

"You should just be grateful his daughter didn't fall for one of our sons, then we might've ended up sharing them all!"

"Hmm. Well, at least Belle and Thomas didn't end up looking like that smarmy bastard... they're both the spitting image of me!"

"What are you talking about? Thomas is the spitting image of Riza."

"Really? I always thought he got his good looks from his other granny..."

Winry giggled girlishly. "Oh, you old charmer you. Here... finish off my apple pie."

"Score! I mean, yes ma'am, if you insist." The look on Ed's face was one of pure childish glee.

"Brother hasn't really changed at all, has he?" sighed Alphonse, rubbing his temples tiredly.

Winry just smiled as she watch Ed eat. "Nope, not really, but then, neither have we. Not much." she let her gaze wander to the three children on the lawn, rolling around with the two big black dogs, laughing with each one moment and then shouting the next, then back at Lisa, reading the dusty volume with the same intensity in her eyes that she'd seen in Ed and Al so often. Finally, she looked back at the table, at her husband, her brother, her sister, her niece... blood or not, family in every way.

"Would we honestly have it any other way?"

Al and May linked hands under the table and grinned at each other, at the same time that Mina and her husband did. Ed, oblivious to the moment, carried on eating. Winry just sighed happily, and went to clean up the rest of the dishes.

The evening ended when the kids tired themselves out, and passed out on a help in the middle of the garden, so like Ed, Al and Winry used to do all those years ago. It was eventually decided that they should wake them up and move them before it got too dark.

"Want us to walk the boys back to their parents?" Al volunteered. "It's not far out of our way."

"Nah, we'll take them inside for a bit," Ed said, crouching down to pick up his namesake. "Let them sleep a little longer." he felt himself creaking as he shifted the weight he his arms and laughed to himself; there was life left in him yet. Winry collected Alex and the two of them took them inside, lying them down on the sofa and covering them up. They were sleeping as soundly as kittens in a basket.

Unable to suppress a smile, Ed walked over the chest where all the family photos stood, stretching back as far as Pinako's youth. There were countless ones of weddings, family gatherings, newborn babies, but his favourite was still one at the back, of him, Al and Winry playing as kids. Without really thinking, he moved its position, so that it stood between one of the newest generation mucking about like puppies, and one fairly recent one of the three of them, Ed, Al and Winry, old and wrinkly and smiling like kids. It was an odd sight to come by nowadays, just the three of them, since they nearly always had a May, or a child or grandchild in tow. They never minded of course, they loved it, but there was something special about a snap of all three of them.

"Ed? What you looking at?" Winry came to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up, grinned broadly, and slipped his hand around his waist, turning back towards their youngest grandchildren.

"We did it, Winry."

"Did what?"

"Something that no Alchemy, no science can achieve. There's no fast way to it, no corners to cut, no magic formula..."

"Edward, just cut the crap and tell me."

Ed laughed and put his hand against her withered cheek, admiring each and everyone one of her laugh lines. Strange how despite how different they looked, nothing had really changed. He didn't know where he wanted to look in that moment, if he wanted to gaze at his grandchildren, or stare at his photographs, his finest accomplishments. In the end, he just settled on Winry's face, on the eyes he'd known as long as his own staring up at him.

"Ed? What did we do?"

"The greatest achievement in the world," he smiled. "We grew old together."

.o0o.

**A/N: Well, there we go. Quite irrelevant fluffy-stuff. It might seem a bit OOC at times... but it's been several years, they had to grow up at some point! Did my best to remain in character, Ed has a few "Hoinheim-traits" I feel (a calmness at certain points, something that comes with age). **

**Note on the names... they're mostly random. You can choose to believe that "Alex" is named so because somewhere along the line, the Elrics married into the Armstrong family (hey, it could happen) but I mostly just wanted another Ed and Al without it being too obvious, ditto Milly is a stand-in for Winry, even if they're not related by blood. **

**Let me know what you think... R&R people!**


End file.
